The Russian President’s announcement of a change in Russia’s military and nuclear doctrine is designed to scare away Ukraine’s foreign partners from supporting the embattled state.
In a statement on September 25, 2024, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a seemingly significant modification of Russia’s military doctrine. He revealed that, in the soon to be changed doctrine, “it is proposed to consider an aggression against Russia by any non-nuclear state,” when this is carried out “with the participation or support of a nuclear power,” as “their joint attack on Russia.” Putin’s message to the West is simple: If you help Ukraine militarily, we may also hit you.
The Russian President further specified that the new doctrine will “clearly set the conditions for Russia’s transition to usage of nuclear weapons.” Putin warned darkly: “We will consider such a possibility once we receive reliable information about a massive launch of air or space attack weapons and their crossing our state border. I mean planes of strategic and tactical aviation, cruise missiles, drones, hypersonic and other aircraft.” The president clarified that the forthcoming changes mean that Moscow “reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in case of aggression against Russia and Belarus.”
The novelty of this threat by Putin, in comparison with his earlier ones, is less its outspokenness than the fact it concerns a forthcoming formal document of Russia. Despite their, in this way, new quality, Putin’s recent announcements do not change, in principle, the Russian position, however. The pre-announced changes to Russia’s military doctrine are as much a psychological operation, by the Kremlin, as its numerous previous public intimidations with nuclear weapons.
As it has done several times before, Moscow wants to scare away foreign supporters of Ukraine from continuing and extending their help. The now proposed change in the military doctrine is yet another attempt to circumscribe Western assistance to Ukraine. One should put Putin’s statement in context, however. Russian official documents – whether laws, doctrines, treaties, or other governmental texts – have little meaning in a country with no rule of law and omnipresent arbitrariness in the behavior of the state. As in domestic affairs, the Kremlin makes decisions based on political preferences rather than on legal acts which can always be adapted or amended ad hoc.
Putin’s new announcements, like other threats by him and his entourage, are related to currently topical strategic debates within the West. One critical discussion is on the question whether to provide Ukraine with more and better flying vehicles including the highly effective but, by now, infamous German cruise missile Taurus. Another debate concerns the issue of whether to give Ukraine the permission to use Western long-range weapons inside Russia. Especially the latter question, i.e. the deployment of Western missiles on Russian state territory, seems to bother the Kremlin.
Yet, these issues need to be seen in their current historical context: Ukraine has for more than two years attacked – with, among others, Western weapons – Russian military targets on the occupied Ukrainian territories of Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson. These five regions are, after the Russian illegal but official annexations of 2014 and 2022, regular Russian state territory – rather than mere “people’s republics” – according to Russia’s amended Constitution.
More recently, Ukraine has also heavily attacked numerous military and industrial targets on Russia’s legitimate state territory. There was even, at least, one drone flying into the Kremlin itself. Some of these Ukrainian attacks had impressive results, and destroyed, for instance, large ammunition storage facilities deep inside Russia.
The existing Russian military doctrine already allows Moscow to use nuclear weapons in response to foreign attacks conducted with conventional weapons only. Ukraine’s massive hits on, and intrusions into both illegitimate and legitimate Russian state territory since 2022 could have been interpreted, by the Kremlin, as permitting Moscow to retaliate with weapons of mass destruction. Since 2010, the Russian military doctrine has been allowing this in cases “of aggression against Russia with the use of conventional weapons when the very existence of the state is threatened.” This peculiarity of Russia’s nuclear doctrine allowing use of atomic weapons in response to attacks with conventional armory has been reaffirmed in the 2020 “Foundations of State Policy of the Russian Federation in the Area of Nuclear Deterrence” approved by Russian Presidential Decree 355.
Accordingly, Putin and his cronies have many times since 2014 indicated their readiness to use nuclear weapons in response to Western-supported Ukrainian armed resistance to Russia’s territorial expansion into Ukraine with conventional weaponry. The phrase “very existence of the Russian state” could have been interpreted to mean the inviolability of its borders, security of airspace, etc. – including those of the annexed Ukrainian territories which are now, in Moscow’s understanding, part of Russia. No wonder that Russian politicians and propagandists have been voicing nuclear threats against numerous countries on a monthly basis since 2022.
Yet, no nuclear weaponry has been employed – neither in Ukraine nor elsewhere. That is because Russian oral or written announcements on the use of nuclear weapons are not previews of actual actions. They are part and parcel of a ruthless psychological warfare operation to subvert Ukraine’s self-defense. Putin’s recent announcement of changes in the Russian military doctrine is part of this large international PR game.
A Russian decision to use nuclear weapons would be guided less by official doctrinal documents than by power political considerations. If the Kremlin thinks using weapons of mass destruction will increase its power, it will do so. Such an action could have happened earlier and could happen in the future independently of the exact wording of the relevant phrases in this or that Russian official text. Political utility rather than official legality, strategic consideration rather than doctrinal obligation will make the Kremlin move in one direction or another.
This means, first, that a Russian escalation vis-à-vis a NATO state is unlikely as long as Moscow believes in the seriousness of the alliance’s mutual defense pledge. It means, secondly, that Western and other states interested in avoiding Russia’s use of weapons of mass destruction in Ukraine should make sure that the Kremlin does not think that it can get away with it. All governments around the world interested in preventing nuclear escalation in Eastern Europe should thus take a public stance.
They need to make clear to the Kremlin that further escalation of Moscow’s already genocidal attack on the Ukrainian nation will have serious consequences for Russia and its leadership. Once again, Putin is threating humankind that, if a country resists Russia’s conventional war of expansion and annihilation, Moscow will go nuclear. All adult humans disagreeing with such a logic and wanting to forestall the realization of such a scenario should say to the Kremlin clearly and loudly: “No!”
Andreas Umland is an analyst at the Stockholm Centre for Eastern European Studies, which is part of the Swedish Institute of International Affairs (UI), an associate professor of political science at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, and the director of the "Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society" series published by Ibidem Press in Stuttgart. His most well-known book is Russia’s Spreading Nationalist Infection (2012).
